


fragility

by tamerofdarkstars



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Forgiveness, Geralt Misses His Bard, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Apologizes, M/M, Pining, Why yes it is another post-episode 6 apology fic, could be read as gen or shippy, he's covered in blood again, why is it he's always covered in blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:48:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22956697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamerofdarkstars/pseuds/tamerofdarkstars
Summary: If life could give him one blessing, he’d said. And the moment his temper had cooled, the moment his head had cleared and he’d taken a good, hard look at himself, he realized of course that life had bestowed that blessing more than two decades earlier.But of course, by that point, Jaskier was already gone.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 18
Kudos: 625





	fragility

**Author's Note:**

> guess who watched the witcher?? guess who's never played a single witcher game?? guess who plans on remedying that ASAP??
> 
> absolutely love geralt "i don't need anyone" of rivia slowly collecting a whole ass family - this shit is my JAM

He’s absolutely filthy and exhaustion has settled in his bones as heavy as lead, but Geralt barely notices. The creature’s head is dragging in the dirt, clutched in fingers locked numb with cold, and all Geralt wants in this whole gods-forsaken world is to get paid and be alone, wrapped up in his thoughts without a single blessed soul anywhere near him.

And a bath. A bath would be nice.

The town looms into view, a blackened smudge against the rising moon. Clouds drift lazily across the inky sky, blocking out the stars and smearing the moonlight. Geralt trudges through the town’s gates, nothing but two wooden posts shoved into the ground, and stumps his way past the shuttered-up houses.

The town is silent, cold and shut up for the night, and damn it, the men that hired him had better still be awake because Geralt has very little patience for anything right at that moment, least of all fucking humans who can’t even pay him the smallest fucking courtesy of being _god damn fucking awake_ when he returned to claim his payment.

Finally, after several moments of silent seething, he sees it – light and noise spilling from the last building in the row.

A tavern. Of fucking course.

Geralt sighs, reaching up and dragging the hand that isn’t clutching a severed head dripping with viscera through the dirt down over his face. He tastes blood that isn’t his own and turns his head and spits sullenly into the wet grass.

“Fuck,” he mutters and starts forward again.

The music is lilting and light, tumbling through the open windows, an undercurrent of the laughter and clapping and stomping of feet that accompanies it. Half the town, by the sounds of it, has gathered in the tavern to enjoy the music and Geralt is loathe to step inside the warm bubble that the music is creating.

It’s heavy, the memory that seems to hang chained around his neck.

He can see the bard’s face before him as clear as if he were standing there, hands on his hips and an indignant expression turning those pretty lips down at the corners.

_Geralt!_ he’d say, storming up to him, barely batting an eye at the blood and guts and shit that have smeared his clothes. _It’s been ages and-- my word, you smell ghastly, you know that? And you’ve got dead monster in your hair again, honestly. Tell me all about it then, it’s been ages since I’ve written you something._

Geralt has done many terrible things in his life, but only a few continue to slice such fresh wounds each time the memory surfaces.

If life could give him one blessing, he’d said. And the moment his temper had cooled, the moment his head had cleared and he’d taken a good, hard look at himself, he realized of course that life had bestowed that blessing more than two decades earlier.

But of course, by that point, Jaskier was already gone.

Geralt stands outside the warm tavern, the severed head dripping blood onto his shoes as the wind creeps up his spine and considers turning around and leaving. Dropping the head at the doorway to the tavern and trudging back out of the village into the night, back to where Roachis waiting at the village outskirts. Off to make camp in the woods and try and forget the sight of Jaskier’s pain shattered all over his face.

“Fuck,” Geralt mutters again and shoulders the door to the tavern open.

It takes a split second for his eyes to adjust to the lamplight inside; the nearest villagers are gaping at him openly, mouths hanging open and their fingers limp against their tankards, but no one has started screaming, which is generally a much nicer reaction than he usually gets.

Geralt’s eyes flick from table to table, ignoring the stares and the whispers that have started circling the room. The music has fallen silent, the lute player stilling his instrument, and Geralt shouldn’t even look, because what are the odds that he’d be here, in this armpit of a village in the middle of absolute frigid nowhere, but he looks anyway because he’s a Witcher, not a Saint, and--

And he needs to blink, once, twice, three times – he must be more exhausted than he thought, because there, sitting on top of the bar with his lute on his knee, is Jaskier, pulled straight from his memories and his haunted half-dreams.

Jaskier is staring at him, eyes wide and round and so achingly familiar that his gaze nearly sends Geralt to his knees right there in the tavern entrance.

He’s struck by another memory, then, of entering another tavern with another slain creature, covered head to toe again in blood, to find Jaskier scribbling furiously as the fool of a man who’d hired him proclaimed him dead.

Jaskier had beamed at him when he’d entered, genuinely pleased to see him, and it had been his quick chorus of that ridiculous song that had nudged the horrified villagers into paying him his due.

Perhaps this Jaskier here has been conjured up from Geralt’s regrets by that very memory.

“Witcher,” says a voice very near his elbow and Geralt tears his eyes from Jaskier with physical effort, looking down at the small round man standing beside him. He’s very nearly not trembling, even though his jaw is clenched with the effort of holding himself still. “You caught it, then?”

Geralt grunts, lifting the head for –fuck it all, Geralt cannot for the life of him remember the man’s damn name – for the little man’s examination. He takes several steps backwards.

“Hm! Yes, yes, uh, that would be a… a head, yes. Um. Thank you,” he says. Geralt lowers his arm. The head is dripping blood on the floor. Geralt can’t quite find it within himself to give a fuck.

There’s a very awkward pause.

“I’ll be taking my payment now,” Geralt grinds out. He is not looking over to where he’d seen Jaskier sitting, still not quite convinced his brain hadn’t conjured him up, and so he’s startled when a lute sounds, a familiar strummed chord slicing through the silence.

“Well?” Jaskier says, voice crystal clear in the stillness of the room. “Go on then. Looks like it’s about time someone tossed a coin to their Witcher, wouldn’t you say?”

He hums a note, strumming the very same melody that Geralt has been unable to keep out of his nightmares, and the room physically relaxes, the tension draining away so obviously that it’s nearly audible.

The villagers join in the song, cheerful and satiated, and their voices swell to the chorus of the first bit of music Jaskier had ever coaxed to life in Geralt’s company, and Geralt needs to leave. Now. His chest is burning, his heart hot and hard beneath his breastbone, and he knows that if he looks at Jaskier, if their eyes meet again, his composure is going to crack clean in two. He takes the leather purse the little man is pressing into his hand, shoving it into his pocket and turns to go. He’s still got the head, and as he lets the door bang shut behind him, he allows himself to get maybe fifty feet from the front entrance before he turns and lobs it as hard as he can into the line of trees behind the tavern.

His hands are shaking and his throat is dry, his tongue heavy and for several moments he just stands there, listening to the thundering of his heard as it pounds against his eardrums.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

“Geralt,” the trees say back, only it isn’t the trees and it isn’t the wind, and when Geralt turns around, Jaskier is there, has followed half a step behind him, lute slung back over his shoulder, as though he’d never been gone.

He’s wearing a green doublet this time, and his hair is a bit longer than Geralt remembers it, but then it’s been months since the mountain, months since Geralt took every ounce of confused emotion and flung it as hard as he could in Jaskier’s direction. Months since Geralt reached out and broke Jaskier on purpose.

He swallows. Opens his mouth. Finds he hasn’t got a single fucking word and closes it again.

Jaskier is watching him carefully, something hesitant in his eyes despite his relaxed expression.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he says and he’s so carefully distant that Geralt takes a step forward, as though maybe if he were standing closer that distance would disappear.

Jaskier raises an eyebrow but doesn’t flinch away, doesn’t take a step backwards to even out the space between them. His eyes flick from Geralt’s face down his body, taking in the mess that covered him.

“Where’s the head?” Jaskier asks, realizing Geralt is empty-handed. Geralt clears his throat.

“Threw it.”

Jaskier blinks. “You...” He stops. Starts again. “You _threw_ it? An entire head. Just up and threw it? Where?”

Geralt pointed over Jaskier’s shoulder into the woods. “Woods.”

“Woods!” Jaskier repeats incredulously, voice sliding high as something like a laugh nearly bubbles through his words. Geralt sways – physically sways – towards that sound, and Jaskier breaks off as alarm flashes across his face.

He puts up his hands, stepping forward and bracing both palms against Geralt’s chest, as though he were falling and Jaskier would keep him upright.

“Are you alright? You look-- fuck, you look really pale, like, more than usual, are you injured? Stabbed? Beaten? Maimed? Got a touch of the runs?”

Geralt looks down at him. Jaskier’s touch burns through his armor. “The runs?” he rasps. Jaskier looks briefly offended.

“It’s not a joke, Geralt. Honestly, just because you probably have some kind of freaky Witcher ability that keeps your body from betraying you just because you’ve eaten a bit of meat that’s gone a little off does not mean you need to wrinkle your nose at it being a legitimate threat that plagues those of us who are perhaps a little more delicate of constitution.”

There’s something warm that is creeping its way through Geralt’s blood, a slow-moving poison seeping through him to the very tips of his fingers and he sighs, suddenly wearier than he’s been in ages. He leans forward, dropping his head so that his forehead is resting against Jaskier’s. He closes his eyes, breathing in and smelling the delicate scent of the oils that Jaskier uses on his skin and hair, something floral and fragrant and clean and sweetly, achingly familiar.

Jaskier goes silent, hands still gentle on Geralt’s chest.

“I’m sorry,” Geralt whispers, the words burning in the hollow of his throat. He’s painfully aware that they’re not enough, that _he’s_ not enough, that he doesn’t deserve the blessing that Jaskier has been in his life, that he could work every day for the rest of their lives to try to earn it and he never would. “I’m sorry.”

Jaskier’s breath leaves him in a shaky punch of air and for a moment there is nothing but the murmur of voices from inside the tavern.

Then Jaskier lifts one hand from where it had been resting just over Geralt’s heart, his fingers now smeared with the creature’s blood, and he reaches up and curls that hand around the back of Geralt’s head, lacing his fingers into Geralt’s filth-crusted hair.

“I know,” Jaskier murmurs and Geralt makes a noise, a wordless desperate nonsense syllable that rips itself from his throat without his permission. Jaskier strokes his hair.

“I was quite upset with you, you know. Wrote some pretty embarrassing songs about the whole thing. Even sang one or two of them, so if they ever catch up to us, I might just have to throw myself from a roof or something. Just warning you now.”

Geralt catches only one word – the past tense. “Was?” he asks hoarsely.

Jaskier sighs. “Yes, you impossible man,” he says and when Geralt lifts his head and opens his eyes, Jaskier is smiling gently at him, his bright eyes crinkling in the corners and Geralt’s throat swells shut, a lump of hardened granite blocking his airways.

He crushes Jaskier to his chest, unable to stop himself, and presses his face down into Jaskier’s hair, breathing him in and feeling the scent of his hair rushing to fill him from the inside out, cracking his heart open and filling it with flowers.

“Geralt,” Jaskier protests, wiggling a little. “You are _filthy_ , can you even smell yourself? You’re getting monster guts all over my shirt. This is going to take _ages_ \--”

“Jaskier,” Geralt rumbles and Jaskier falls silent for a beat, maybe two. Then--

“Oh no, you can’t pull that now. You’ve gone and messed up, you know that? You’ve all but told me you missed me. You can’t take that back.”

And Geralt pulls away, just a bit, because there’s tension in Jaskier’s voice now, a tension that wasn’t there a few moments ago, and he looks worried, beneath that casual veneer, and Geralt’s breath stills in his lungs.

“Jaskier,” he says again, quieter this time. “Look at me.”

Jaskier does and once again, Geralt finds himself groping for words. He licks his lips, instantly regrets it when he tastes blood, and instead clears his throat.

“It’s been...” he begins, feeling foolish and strangely nervous as Jaskier continues to look at him. “It has been…”

It’s been what? He thinks of the nights alone, just him and Roach again, sitting beside a fire with nothing but his swirling thoughts for company. Of the way he can’t quite get comfortable in any of the rented rooms whenever he manages to scrap together the gold enough to pay for one. Of the way he’d caught himself turning his head more than once to say something only to realize that he’d no one nearby to hear it.

“It’s been…?” Jaskier prompts quietly.

Geralt swallows. “Quiet,” he confesses.

“I thought that’s what you wanted,” Jaskier says and Geralt shakes his head.

“Sometimes,” he says, halting, hating how clumsily the words fall. “I think... I might feel better with a little… hm. Noise.”

Jaskier is beginning to smile, the grin spreading wide over his face, reaching all the way up into his eyes. “Might I suggest some music?” he asks, his eyes sparkling, and Geralt feels the corner of his own mouth tugging upwards in response. Jaskier reaches back and swings his lute forward, strumming a chord. “I happen to know a tune or two.”

Geralt tilts his head back, letting his eyes drift shut as some of the tension knotting in his shoulders finally _finally_ seeps out of him. “Somehow I thought you might.”


End file.
